Self-Help

Thanks to everyone who either nominated Ready to Bloom or voted for this blog for The Top 50 Personal Development Blogs of 2012. Ready to Bloom made it as Number 33! Thanks for your support.

And do check out the full list (link above) to see 49 other great personal development blogs. I was already familiar with some of the ones that made the list, and others are completely new to me.

Thanks again for your help with spreading the word on Ready to Bloom!

I was also reminded of the importance of consistent branding across my online platform, something I’m constantly reminding people about. I use the same bio photo on all sites EXCEPT LinkedIn…and of course that was where he went for my bio photo […]

I know you’ve had a lot to look at every day: vision board, affirmations, and your list of how you would live your life differently. What changes have you noticed in your life in the past few days or weeks? Be sure to make note of everything that has changed, as becoming aware of differences can help us pave the road for more changes.

Now it’s time to plan concrete actions to help you achieve the life of your dreams. Sound like a daunting task? It’s easy, when you break it down into steps. This is what we’ve spent weeks and months on: answering the Three Happiness Questions so that we can get clear on who we are, where we are in life, and start planning where we want to be headed for the future.

I trust that you’ve been looking at both your vision board and your affirmations several times a day. What have you learned? How do you feel about your board? How do you feel when reading your affirmations? Has anything changed for you?

Today we’re going to look at how you might live your life differently if you were already all of the things you’ve been repeating as your affirmations. If you already were confident, if you already were flexible, if you already had what you needed to make your vision board come true…how would you live your life differently?

This is all about changing our ways of thinking and imagining a new way of living, using the vision board and the affirmations as a springboard for making our dreams become reality.

Get ready to start thinking differently so you can create the life of your dreams: […]

So you’ve been living with your vision board for a week now. Perhaps more or less, if you’re not completing these exercises exactly as they’ve been posted here.

Take a few minutes to reflect on your vision board and your relationship with it. What have you learned about your board since then? Does it feel familiar to you? Do you feel comfortable looking at it? Does it make more sense now than it did when you created it?

Today we’re going to work on creating affirmations based on our board. We’re going to look at the things that we would need to believe in order to be, do, or have the things represented on our vision board.

Perhaps you consider yourself to be a creative, artistic kind of person. Or maybe not. Either way, you’ll find it easy to create a vision board that expresses your dreams for your future. You may have already heard of a vision board: it’s a collage of images that represent your dreams for your life, such as the things that you want to be, do, and have. It can include inspiring words or phrases.

Maybe you’ve even done a vision board before. Did you find it to be a useful process? How successful was your board? When was the last time you looked at it? Get it out now, if you still have it at home, and take a look. How have these elements become a part of your life?

Or perhaps they haven’t. Many people create a vision board and then toss it to the back of their closet. That won’t work.

Today’s exercise takes your dreams one step further. Gather together your responses from the dreams exercise and from the be/do/have exercise. Now we’re going to act as if these things already exist: you already are the person of your dreams, you’ve already done the things you wished for, and you already have the things you dreamt of.

You may be familiar with the exercise of stating your wishes as though you already had them. One popular way of doing this is by writing each statement with the prefix: “I am so happy and grateful now that…”

Does that sound too new-agey or too much like the law of attraction? Re-word it as you like until you’re comfortable with it. There are two important elements that you need to include: the statement should be in the present tense, and it should express your gratitude for having achieved or received your dream.

So you’ve taken a look at your dreams. Now, I’d like you to revisit your dreams for the future, but this time using a completely different technique: be/do/have. You may already be familiar with this concept: I know I’ve come across it at least a couple of times. And this is the perfect stage in the Ready to Bloom process to focus on this.

If you knew you could be anything you wanted, if you knew you could do anything you dreamed of, and if you knew you could have anything you wished for…what would you be? What would you do? What would you have?

It’s important that you really open up your mind to these possibilities. Some people have issues with feeling that they don’t deserve something. Or they may think something is logically impossible.

Note: I’ve moved this post from Q1 to Q3, as it’s more of a forward-facing question than a look at who you actually are, and I’ve updated it a bit. It’s been replaced with an exercise on how to create your personal mission statement. If you’ve already completed this exercise, take a look at it again and make any changes that occur to you.

You’ve heard me talk about day dreaming rather than goal setting, and you’ve heard me talk about Someday Isle. So you might be surprised that I’m about to ask you to start dreaming. As I mentioned in a previous post, we’re still getting to know ourselves, so let’s just explore for now. Be creative. Get to know yourself. You can always turn them into goals at a later date.

How are you feeling after the clearing exercise? If you still have things on your list, continue to work on them. Some things take time.

In the exercises for the Where am I? section, you completed your Wheel of Life, and you identified your priorities and your top three areas to improve. If it’s been a while since you finished these exercises, go back and do them again. Perhaps it’s been more than a couple of months, or maybe you just feel like things have changed a lot since you did them and your current life no longer coincides with your responses. Either way, it can be useful to update your answers.

Take a look at your Wheel of Life. Assuming each area isn’t a 10, think about whether or not you actually want each area to be a 10. Perhaps a 5 for Social Life is good enough for you, and you really don’t need that area to be more than that. You already have your priorities numbered outside the wheel, along the border. These numbers may help you determine your ideal level for each area. […]

The third and final of The Three Happiness Questions is Where am I going? To get ready to move onto this last stage of the Ready to Bloom program, start out by reviewing your journal or notebook with your responses to the first two Happiness Questions. It’s important that you’re clear on your answers to both of these questions, because this information and understanding is vital for creating your path forward.

Ready? The next step is clearing out and changing some of the things you may want to get rid of, to enable your progress down your path. It may resemble hacking through the undergrowth with a machete, or it may be more like cutting back some stray brambles. Either way, it’s important to get this done now so you can move forward.

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About Holly

I’m Holly Worton, and I help women entrepreneurs who are stuck and feeling frustrated because they don't have a steady stream of clients. Through a combination of practical business coaching and a technique that works to quickly and easily change beliefs at the subconscious level, I help them move past the things that are getting in the way so they can build the business of their dreams.